Special Blog Post: Molly and George

When George W. Bush finally died, he found himself in a large, very nice hotel being led down a hallway of suites by none other than Molly Ivins.

"Hurry it along, there, Shrub. We've got to get you settled into the room and get your things unpacked. Dinner is always served at six o'clock sharp, and we don't want to be late."

Quite confused by the whole situation and somewhat out of breath from the brisk pace he was having to maintain to keep up, George panted, "Dinner?"

"Well, yes, George," Molly answered without looking back. "This is a respectable establishment."

"The after-life is in a five-star hotel?!" George demanded.

"Of course," Molly growled as she stopped at the door to one of the suites.

George caught up to her as she unlocked the door and opened it. He stuck his head in and looked around, "This place is gorgeous! I actually made it to Heaven even after all the things I did in my life that I knew were wrong and despicable and evil!"

Molly then patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, Shrub, it's like this: I'm in Heaven. You, on the other hand, are now my roommate for the rest of Eternity."

Upon hearing this, George walked slowly and quietly over to the large bay windows, and after looking out for a long, silent moment into the blackness of the Infinite Void, he grunted, "Well, shit."

♦                    ♦                    ♦

Godspeed, Ms. Ivins, and thank you.

Special Blog Post: Humor That Won't Be for Everyone

The joke that follows is not funny...

...unless, that is, you have a very quirky sense of humor, in which case, not only will you find the joke worth a laugh, but you will also be delighted by the graphic I provide in links at the end of this post. In fact, you might find out that the greatest humor of the joke is in printing out the graphic and putting it up where others will see it and say, "Uh... I don't get it."

Without further ado, here's the joke.

Three missionaries, two of them Presbyterians of good breeding and education and one a Free Will Baptist from the sticks, were captured by cannibals. They were taken to a guarded tent and thrown in.

One of the Presbyterian preachers hollered, "What are you going to do with me?"

A cannibal guard stuck his head in and replied, "We're going to fatten you up one at a time, boil you, eat you, and use your skin to make a big canoe."

Within an hour, a huge meal was served to this minister, who was quite hungry and snarfed it all down, after which he was dragged out of the tent, never to be seen again.

The second minister bawled, "Guard! What are you going to do to me?!"

The cannibal poked his head in the tent, rolled his eyes, and said, "We're going to fatten you up, boil you, eat you, and use your skin to make a big canoe."

And just like with the first preacher, this one was promptly served a huge meal, which he devoured quickly because of his hunger, after which he was dragged out of the tent, never to be seen again.

The Free Will Baptist minister had stayed silent through all of this. The cannibal stuck his head in to see why the fellow wasn't demanding to know the details of his fate and saw that the guy was just sitting there. The cannibal shrugged his shoulders and handed him the big meal.

A little later, the cannibal stuck his head in the tent, and the first thing he saw was that the meal was untouched; then he realized that the Baptist was over in the corner stabbing himself all over his back and stomach with the fork that had been provided with the food.

The cannibal yelled, "What th' Hell are you DOING?!!" to which the heavily bleeding man replied:

"Ain't nobody gonna make a canoe outta ME!"

And now, if you found that joke worth a laugh, and if you understand the underlying metaphor, please feel free to use this graphic as wall art for your home or office, or as a statement to post on your own Website.

Click here for the large version, click here for the medium version, or click here for the small version.


The Dark Wraith thanks those in the audience who are smiling.

Special Analysis: The Battlefield and the Nomads

While the mainstream media reports in almost incidental fashion that armed forces of the United States have made several lethal attacks on suspected terrorist enclaves in Somalia, some online writers in the Blogosphere have taken a more concerned view of these military forays. For example, the blogger Peter of Lone Tree, writing at BlondeSense, notes an article at World War 4 Report rather graphically describing the result of a U.S. aerial attack earlier this month in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, a strike in which perhaps 80 people—nomads going to watering holes at night—were killed, along with livestock. It is worth noting that nomadic peoples are often night travelers, and not only because of cooler temperatures after dark: the night usually affords nomads some degree of safety because they are less noticeable. In fact, even in modern urban areas of the world, "nomadic" sub-cultures exist entirely unknown to most people, who are out only in daylight and early evening.

In response to Peter of Lone Tree's brief recap of the recent U.S. military activity in Somalia, I offered commentary at BlondeSense that I herewith post in edited and expanded form as a special analysis.

The military actions we are undertaking in Somalia are pursuant to the "Global War on Terror" (GWOT). While many, if not most, Americans understand that term largely as conceptual American policy, it is most decidedly far more specific and operational; and because it is persistently and tangibly applicable, it is altogether lethal, as well.

We truly are waging a "global war": we as a nation have declared that we stand ready to carry out military missions in any theatre, within any sovereign nation, and by any means; and not only are we prepared in a contingency sense to do so, we will do so.

That's how wars are fought. They are not about some visceral, emotional readiness; they are, instead, about planning, action, and follow-up. They are not about the rhetoric of war; they are about the actual destruction of property and the killing of people. To dismiss warhawks like Richard Cheney and George W. Bush as a blustering cowards who declined to fight the wars of their generation is to miss the point that, in our generation, they are the nexus of state-sponsored violence that can be projected anywhere in the world.

In the large sense, the U.S. troops in Iraq are not fighting "the" war. That lowly country is merely one venue—a high-profile, quite visible one—on a global battlefield. Leaving Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with disengaging "the" war the neo-conservatives have declared with the advice and consent of the Congress.

Our fierce and war-wise President and Vice President—steeped as they are in military tradition and combat experience, of course—have said that we are in a "generational struggle". In Mr. Cheney's words, "It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term." For all intents and purposes, that means our leaders have begun a war without terminus, without borders, and without any meaningful way to stop it if the strategy of opponents of the madness focus on one theatre of engagement without understanding the cancer of American hegemony that has infected the very essence of American foreign policy in ways unchangeable by the particular desires, resolutions, or passions of any given Congress.

Far more important than Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or any other particular skirmish, be it big, long, and expensive or small, short, and sweet, is this: because the United States of America really is part of the global community, a Global War on Terror necessarily means a war that can and without any doubt will be prosecuted here every bit as vigorously and violently as it is in the darkest reaches of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. That's what the "Global" in GWOT really means.

The United States as Empire remains on the move. It is not stopped by what might become a quagmire in one theatre of engagement, it is not abated by what might become a public hostility to its architects, and it is not deterred by what might become escalating reactive violence by those of the world greatly harmed by its ways and means.

The gathering night of Empire will proceed apace, and it will be on that darkened road into the future that the peoples of the world, including the citizens of this country, will find themselves traveling, nothing more than another horde of nomads hoping not to be noticed by the Empire's engines of death prowling the blackened skies.


The Dark Wraith welcomes America to the battlefield.

Analysis: Index Portfolio Performance during the Bush Administration's First Six Years

George W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001. Until January 4, 2007, when the Democrats took control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, the Republicans had controlled both the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, save for a brief period in mid- to late-2001 when a Republican-turned-Independent caused an even split in the Senate. Over the past six years, then, the financial house of this country has been in the virtually uninterrupted hands of the GOP, during which time the federal government went from running growing budget surpluses in the last years of the Clinton Administration to bleeding hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink every year under President George W. Bush and his congressional allies. A list of other calamities of Republican rule would necessarily include, but not be restricted to, an uncontrolled and debilitating regime of trade deficits; a spiraling conflict in the Middle East; and, of course, the first successful attack by a foreign enemy on cities in the continental United States in almost 200 years.

The Republican Party, through its legislators in Congress and its President in the White House, has also overseen what must be described as nothing short of abysmal performance of the U.S. stock markets, which represent the overwhelming bulk of the value of all public ownership of American corporations. It is in the stocks traded on these exchanges that much of the wealth of the nation is invested by everything from huge pension and mutual funds to individual speculators.

Blame for the miserable performance of the stock markets over the past six years rests squarely with the GOP, which rode into office on a long-standing platform of fiscal prudence and policies tilted toward economic growth through low taxes and reduction of regulatory hurdles to business investment and growth. The Republican Party has failed, despite its blustering rhetoric and the curiously rosy data pumped out from the government agencies it controls.

As of Friday, January 19, 2007, George W. Bush had been President of the United States 2,188 days, two days short of exactly six years. Economic policy during those six years has been completely controlled by President Bush and his Republican Party members in Congress. Democrats had no control over the formulation of economic policies and the federal budgets arising therefrom. They were shut out of taxation and spending decisions by uncompromising rules and actions imposed by the Republicans, who showed no intention of or interest in consensus in governance. Responsibility for the huge federal budget deficits year after year that have hallmarked the rule of the Republicans rests squarely with their party, its legislators in Congress, and the policy-makers in the White House, including George W. Bush, himself.

The public sector has suffered the long-held hope of certain branches of conservativism that the federal government could be reduced in size, crippled in carrying out certain of its regulatory duties, and diminished in its tax revenue generating capacity. The desired goal of this political prescription of "limited government" is that, through the diminishment and degradation of the public sector, the private sector would flourish. No reasonable argument could be made that, if the private sector were indeed the great beneficiary of entrepreneurialism at its most productive, ownership in business would reflect this through substantial returns on equity. Investors in the stock markets of the United States, particularly investors abiding by prudent portfolio diversification rules and reasonable buy-and-hold strategies, should have seen appreciation in the real value of the money they invested in stocks. This is the necessary reward to induce surrender of current consumption. It is the motivation for all rational investors, be they individuals of limited means or great mutual funds: the goal of investing in the stock market is to have at a future time more purchasing power by foregoing current consumption opportunities. For many Americans, long-term investments in stocks and other securities are to the end of having some degree of financial security in retirement. For businesses, the accumulation of equity positions in other companies is in its ideal a signal of calculated judgment that gain is to be had through the long-term, expected future cash flows of acquired enterprises.

From the first day of trading, January 22, 2001, after President Bush became the 43rd President of the United States, until the last trading day, January 19, 2007, before the publication date of this article, the performance of the major stock markets—measured by the index portfolios of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite—has been abominable. Only the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to achieve a positive real return on investment over the past six years, and that return was a miserly half-a-percent on an annualized basis, a level of performance that would get any fund manager taken out and shot.

January 22, 2001, was the first day of trading after Mr. Bush became President. The three major stock market indices stood at the following levels at the close of trading on that day:

January 22, 2001, Index Closing Values
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: 10,578.24
     Standard & Poor's 500: 1342.9
     NASDAQ Composite: 2757.91

At the close of trading on Friday, January 19, 2007, these same three averages stood at the following levels:

January 19, 2007, Index Closing Values
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: 12,565.53
     Standard & Poor's 500: 1,430.50
     NASDAQ Composite: 2,451.31

If an investor were to have formed a portfolio based upon each of these three indices and managed each portfolio in terms of composition and balance to mirror the relevant index, the investor would have earned the following total nominal returns on investment over the 2,188 days from January 22, 2001, to January 19, 2007:

Total Nominal Portfolio Returns over 2,188 Days
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +18.79%
     Standard & Poor's 500: +6.52%
     NASDAQ Composite: —11.12%

Expressing these returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the nominal results just presented are as following:

Annualized Nominal Portfolio Returns over 2,188 Days
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +2.91% per year
     Standard & Poor's 500: +1.06% per year
     NASDAQ Composite: —1.95% per year

The above are nominal (that is, "not corrected for inflation") results. Taking into account the erosion of purchasing power (that is, "the effect of inflation") on portfolio values over the holding period requires adjusting each of the current values to its equivalent purchasing power value on January 22, 2001. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index data for January 2001, the CPI stood at 175.1, and for December 2007, the CPI stood at 201.8. The January 2007 figure can be estimated by various methods, and here, a conservative projection of 201.83 is derived from the three-month moving average of the CPI, implying an annualized inflation rate for the current month of nearly zero, based upon the average of the annualized inflation rates for the previous three months.

Expressing the closing index portfolio values as of Friday, January 19, 2007, in terms of their January 2001 purchasing power equivalents provides the following results:

January 19, 2007, Index Values in January 2001 Purchasing Power Value
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: 10,901.18
     Standard & Poor's 500: 1241.03
     NASDAQ Composite: 2126.63

The total real return on investment for each portfolio is then the quotient of the January 2001 index value when divided into the adjusted January 19, 2007, value:

Total Real Portfolio Returns from January 22, 2001, to January 19, 2007
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +3.05%
     Standard & Poor's 500: —7.59%
     NASDAQ Composite: —22.89%

Finally, expressing these real returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the total real return results just presented are as follows:

Annualized Real Portfolio Returns from January 22, 2001, to January 19, 2007
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.50% per year
     Standard & Poor's 500: —1.31% per year
     NASDAQ Composite: —4.24% per year

The results above are summarized in the following chart:


The total and real returns to the selected portfolios are presented below in graphical form:



An investor forming a portfolio tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the beginning of the Bush Administration in January of 2001 until January 19, 2007, would have realized a total gain in real value of the portfolio of just over three percent, which is equivalent to an annualized, compounded rate in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of just one-half percent per year; the investor forming a portfolio tracking the Standard & Poor's 500 over that period would have suffered a total loss in real value of the portfolio of more than seven-and-a-half percent, which is equivalent to an annualized, compounded annual rate of loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of about one-and-a-third percent per year; and the investor forming a portfolio tracking the NASDAQ Composite index over that period would have suffered a loss in total real value of the portfolio of almost twenty-three percent, which is equivalent to a compounding rate of loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of about four-and-a-quarter percent per year.

From a well-balanced portfolio of the common stock of reasonably low-risk, very large public corporations to an equally well-balance portfolio of the common stock of relatively riskier, small-cap public corporations, common stock—the equity (that is, the "ownership") claim on corporations—has provided real returns over the course of the Bush Administration that were at best miserably anemic and more likely significantly negative.

Securities markets do not make long-term assessments of the value of the American economy based upon political biases: billions of shares of stock trade each day, and the total value of these trades is so great as to be almost incomprehensible. Over the past six years, the absolute control of the government by the Bush Administration and its Republican allies in Congress has been subject to an on-going, objective assessment by the securities markets of the United States. The result to date of this real-value assessment is that the American economy, as represented by the market values of stocks of large, medium, and small public corporations, has not grown. This is an undeniable, unavoidable fact delivered by the very stock markets whose large-scale participants by and large support the Republican Party, its goals, and its politicians.

Regardless of how large the nearly daily dose of good economic news the Bush Administration induces the mainstream media to repeat, the Administration can neither manipulate the stock market data, nor can it find a scapegoat for the broad-based, long-term depletion of private equity value its policies have caused.

The performance of stock markets has real consequences for average, working Americans. The money they invest is money they surrender using in the here and now, hoping, as they do—indeed, trusting—that their foregone current consumption will be rewarded with greater purchasing power later, very likely in their retirement years when they are no longer generating significant income through work. When the stock markets fail to provide that reward, and especially when they fail so strikingly over a six-year period, those average investors have effectively seen their decision to invest rather than consume prove to have been wrong and harmful to their self-interest. For the average Americans who plan for retirement in part or in whole based upon investments made and held in the stock market over many years, the Bush Administration's record is nothing short of catastrophic in terms of people's financial security. For most, however, the full realization of the value lost and the disrupted, nearly irreparable damage to future capital appreciation of their investments in the stock markets will come only after the era of the neo-conservatives has come fully to an end, and it will then be the grim responsibility of future politicians to do what little can be done to rectify the mess the GOP left in the wake of its shameful leadership at the beginning of this century.


The Dark Wraith will provide frequent and pointed reminders during the time to come of why the financial house of this nation is the wreck that it surely will be.

The Written Peace: Open Forum of January 19, 2007

As your host prepares to do something he's never done before on this Website, an open thread is herewith offered to give readers a place to say what's on their minds and to speak their peace.

I shan't tell you what it is I'm trying to do, and the reason is that I'm not altogether sure I can accomplish it; not, that is, without moving Heaven and Earth. The Heaven part would be easy, what with how light and airy that place is supposed to be. It's the Earth part that poses the challenge, what with the lithosphere and all those metals and clays and people weighing it down.

Nevertheless, stepping back from the Herculean aspects of what I'm planning, I think I can get the project done and posted, maybe this weekend if I'm lucky. It's actually part of a larger project I've undertaken, one that has to do with my other life, the one where I'm a professor.

Although I long for the old days when I could teach with a blackboard and a piece of chalk, that time has passed, and now college teaching is fast becoming a battle to stay in front of new technology and try to keep it from overrunning the core of my craft. The obsession with this new technology and that new technology is driving me to distraction: companies marketing their latest wares are bad enough, but they find such a receptive audience in higher education, especially among the "IT" (information technology) insiders who swear to God in front of the administrative purse-holders that we simply must have the latest, or that we simply cannot do without the coolest. And, of course, I come off looking like some latter-day Luddite when I growl that I don't need it, I don't want it, and I won't use it if it's purchased.

The argument doesn't last long. The marketing types join forces with the IT folks, and together they pull out the Death Pulse: "It will make your job as a teacher easier." That's when enough of the faculty—deprived of memories of previous promises like that or too young to know that new technology doesn't really work that way—all run like a herd to the watering trough of the newest toys, gadgetry, and even methods that "incorporate technology into the classroom."

This all never would have happened if Bill Gates and his Microsoft crew had been forced to sit through a four-year college education with PowerPoint Professors. They would all now be dead from the boredom in their college classes, or they would have become middle-class workers in the financial services sector. (But I repeat myself, there.)

Grr.

So, here I am, trying to work out for my own purposes the details of how to deploy some Information Age technology, and I'm hoping to use this Website as my demonstration prototype. Rest assured that, even if I pull this off, it's not going to be perfect; but at the same time, I won't deploy it here if it's less than adequate.


Speaking of teaching, several weeks ago I had an interesting new experience. At one of the schools where I teach, we have a day several times a year when we bring in kids in grades five and six to do math and science stuff. These math mini-camps always comprise six stations, each in its own classroom on campus, where a professor and assistants spend thirty minutes with each group having the kids do something math-related. The kids come from various schools in the area, and each school group moves from station to station through the day. At the end, we have a big group assembly where we show them something very cool that has to do with physics and mathematics applied to a real-world, fairly dramatic situation. (Think "conservation of momentum.")

At my station, the kids learn about measuring, calculating costs, and determining profit. They make Kool-Aid, and they must "pay" for the sugar, water, and drink mix they use, and they must then have judges determine how much they can charge for their drink based upon how good the final product is. Each school group that comes in is broken into four teams, each of which works against the clock to get the product made and judged. Generally speaking—partly because I play the role of a bellowing, high-strung professor who lets them go hog-wild as they do their work—the kids really love the project, especially the part where I have to try their drinks. There have been times when I took a swig and nearly choked to death, either because the drink was so sweet it could rot teeth, or because it was so sour it sucked all the mucous out of my face.

We've been doing these math mini-camps for more than a few years, now, and they always go off without a hitch. From these brief encounters with ten- and eleven-year-olds, along with the occasional tutoring I do of kids this age and the fact that I used to teach at a private K-12 school, I have learned a little bit about how children work, think, and (to some extent) learn.

This math mini-camp I just did was a little different from usual. This was the first time we had as one of the "school" groups a community of home-schoolers and Montessori school attendees. Apparently, the parents of these kids constitute a very close-knit, identifiable, real community of child-rearers out in this part of the country. I had no idea.

As I understand it, there was some kind of request made to the administration, possibly including some degree of political pressure, for the college to recognize this learning community and to acknowledge it as meriting a slot in the math mini-camp just like we would give to a traditional school. I don't know exactly how that worked, nor do I want to.

The day started off a little different. We always show the kids a movie and have them eat before the mini-camp begins. This time, our plan to show one of the Harry Potter movies was shot down: the home-schooler/Montessori parents nixed that one. Ditto for Pirates of the Caribbean. Fortunately, we have some old, G-rated, non-controversial stuff in the library, so we got through that issue without much of a hitch.

It then occurred to a couple of the station leaders that content would have to be modified: references to evolution at the genetics station were pulled, as was a discussion of the time frames for ice ages at the weather analysis station.

I didn't have to worry about any of that at my station, so I figured there would be no differences between the traditional school groups and the home-schooler/Montessori group. As it turned out, I was wrong.

Unlike the kids from traditional schools—who come into my classroom yakking excitedly, flying everywhere with their teachers and my assistants trying their best to get them seated into equal-sized groups at the four tables I've set up—the home-schooler/Montessori kids came in quietly, their mothers following. There were five of these mothers, three with infants and toddlers in arms. The women were dressed in a way I cannot describe as exactly "conservative" so much as almost (for lack of a better word) "poor"—or, maybe more accurately, "joyless": no bright colors, nothing pretty, no effort to dress up at all for the day. It was almost like costume—no, it was costume; it was a statement, both about beliefs and about class status—and it was so striking, even in its subtlety. Only one of these mothers would even look at me, so I had to have the assistants explain to them how the station goes in terms of process and objectives: the kids at each table constitute a team that has to work quickly and cooperatively to make a pitcher of Kool-Aid using ingredients in a cost-efficient way to produce a final product to be judged for how much people might pay for it.

The kids obediently sat down at their tables. I began my usual hollering, thundering, act-crazy routine, which always elicits laughing, talking, and general mayhem. From these kids, though, I got only reserved chuckles.

"Fine," I thought to myself, "I'll go for the grand finale before they get to work on their project." My station is conducted in one of our big biology labs. In one corner is a full-sized mannequin with the skin off in the front to show the internal organs. The back is just a normal mannequin, complete with a naked ass. I always say, "We're about to begin, and I want you to have FUN," as I walk over to the mannequin, which I then grab and whirl around as I say, "BUT!!!" and pointing to the dummy's backside, I look at the kids and growl, "...and this is a BIIIIIG BUTT... don't make a mess!"

Usually, the kids roar with laughter; but not these home schoolers and Montessoris. Quite a few of them almost did, trying their best not to look at their mothers, who were glaring alternately at them and at me. The kids held their laughter in check.

Oh, well. So much for that. I bellowed, "GO! Get your drinks made!"

Now, at this point the room usually turns into a fine example of chaos, with kids running up to me to fill their pitchers with water, everyone arguing and yelling about who's going to do what, how much sugar should be put in, how much drink mix should be added, what goes in first, who's going to keep track of how much cost is being accumulated, and all that. But these home schoolers and Montessoris weren't like that, not at all. For several minutes, there was almost no movement at any of the four tables. Eventually, at three of the tables I saw what were probably latent, social dominance-oriented personality types emerge to try to coordinate action. The fourth table seemed to have no such individual, so there was an absence of anyone who could take a leadership role. I sent two assistants to that table to help the kids get going.

At every one of the four tables, each of which had five kids, there were at least two who simply refused to participate in the activity. They just sat there, not so much defiantly as—how should I put it?—maybe petulantly: they just weren't going to be involved in this. Some of them looked like they were on the verge of tears, and my efforts, along with those of the assistants, to try to pull them into the group activity failed miserably, in part because the groups, themselves, were not "naturally" organizing, which would have been necessary for any meaningful effort of members to help someone feel welcome and needed.

The thirty minutes seemed to drag by, unlike how it always is with the classes of traditional school kids, wherein I'm in a heart-stopping race to get everything accomplished in the lousy half-hour I've got. But here's the thing: these home schooler/Montessori kids actually got finished sooner than other kids do.

Much more importantly, the math calculations with which the traditionally schooled kids struggle were done by these home schooled and Montessori kids without batting an eye. Now, I'm talking literally about most traditionally schooled ten- and eleven-year-olds having serious problems doing ten cents plus one cent plus thirty-nine cents! Only a few of the traditionally schooled kids have any sophistication whatsoever in either organizing quantitative information or knowing what to do with it. It's not that they cannot add and subtract; most of them can, at least to a limited extent. Instead, it's that they don't see arithmetic having any connection to the information in front of them.

Not these home-schooled and Montessori kids, though. They had their math skills down pat. Most of the kids had done the math on their own. In fact, any part of the entire project they could do on their own, they did, and that's because they had no investment in their group, even though their final product had to be a group effort.

As many obvious and subtle differences between these kids and those who are schooled traditionally as I thought I had seen up to that point, more were about to go on display. Traditionally schooled kids almost invariably make drinks that come in at a per-cup cost of anywhere between twenty-two cents and a little under a dollar. However, every one of the four tables of home schooled and Montessori kids came in at under twelve cents per cup! In fact, they all came in at almost identical per-cup costs of eleven cents, with one group hitting ten cents. This consistency from one table to the next was striking, and the difference between how these kids used resources and how traditionally schooled kids used resources was remarkable.

But here's the upshot. The judges rate the drinks on a scale of one to four: a one means the drink will sell for five cents per cup; a two means the drink will sell for fifteen cents per cup; a three means the drink will sell for a quarter a cup; and a four means the drink will sell for fifty cents per cup. Usually, the ratings on the drinks are threes. We give a two if a drink doesn't taste very good, and we give a one if we really, really don't want to take another sip to make sure it's as bad as it tasted on the first try. Every one of the home schooler/Montessori groups got a one; and not only that, I'll tell you right now, that was being generous. I mean, I have no idea what they did, but somehow those drinks were uniformly the most awful stuff I had ever tasted in all the times I have run that station at math mini-camp.

The judges got together at the front of the room and bitched in whispers about how bad the stuff was that they'd just put in their mouths. I knew very well I wasn't going to be able to tell those kids—especially with their mothers right there—that their drinks sucked; so, without losing a beat, I stepped forward and hollered, "You all got the same rating! Let's have a big round of applause for yourselves! Congratulations!" I was thinking to myself, "Please, Lord, don't let anyone ask what the score was. Fortunately, just then, the next group arrived at the door, and one of my assistants bellowed, "Alright, it's time to head on over to the next station!"

Talk about being saved by the bell.

The rest of the day went as usual: total bedlam, yelling; laughing; drinks spilled; kids running up to tell me this, that and the other stuff about themselves—just delightful insanity, and a good dose of what learning can be like once in a great while.

One thing is still bothering me. Whenever the groups assemble to leave and go to their next station, I always have the chance to get hugged by some of the kids, and a few of the boys give me a glance that means I need to go up to them, take the smile off my face and replace it with a slightly serious look, and reach out with one of my big paws for a firm handshake with their small paws. "See you in about eight years," I like to say. Fifth and six graders aren't quite old enough to pretend approval of adults doesn't mean anything to them. I didn't have the chance to give any good-byes—hugs, handshakes, or even simple, big smiles—to those home-schooled and Montessori kids; but even though I feel bad about that, I honestly don't think it would have mattered to them if I had taken the opportunity to give some praise, pats on the back, and invitations to come again when they're ready for college. As long as those kids are under the watchful eye of their parents twenty-four hours a day, they have all the approval of adults they'll ever need... at least until they grow up.

If they're ever allowed to, that is.



This is an open forum. Talk about anything. I have special events planned for the evening, including a Kool-Aid tasting game if anyone's interested. Later, we'll turn up the house lights and have a contest to see who can act the most like a Democratic congressperson saying the word "impeachment" without breaking into a cold sweat.

If the crowd gets rowdy, we might have a round of "fantasy combat." That's where you have to describe exactly where you'd like to see George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get dropped into a combat zone in Iraq. Will it be a patrol in al-Anbar province? an IED bomb squad in downtown Baghdad? a poorly armored Humvee that's gotten off the main road near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit? You decide! Where would our President and Vice President best serve their country by bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East?

And, no, you don't get to choose strapping them to the nuclear bombs Israel is going to drop on Iran. The nukes these days are too small to carry extra payload. Chickenhawks mess up the aerodynamics of bombs they're tied to just as much as they mess up the future of the nations they latch themselves onto.



The Dark Wraith opens the espresso bar for the night's activities.

Special Graphic Post: Awaiting the Day

This graphic may be reposted with attribute.

Special Blog Post: The Moment of a Comet

At left is a morning picture of C/2006 P1, "Comet McNaught," so named for Robert McNaught, who found it as a faint smudge on a photograph taken in early August 2006 at the Siding Spring Observatory. The comet, a small celestial body making a brief visit to the inner solar system, is traveling on a trajectory that is making it one of the brightest of its kind in decades.

On January 12, Comet McNaught reached perihelion at only 16 million miles from the sun, which slung it around to emerge for people on Earth as an evening flare quietly shining in the low southern skies. It has a round, fuzzy head of volatile gas and dust, and a short, slightly delta-shaped tail of dust particles falling away. In the coming nights, it will be visible later into dusk, but it will be getting fainter as it slips away from the sun and Earth. Soon, it will be too dim to see with the naked eye.

Because it came in on such a tight trajectory, the sun's gravity has probably given the comet so much additional speed that it now has "escape velocity" from the solar system. That means it will never return. It will cruise out into the cold, stark emptiness of interstellar space, where it will forever slip through the bright darkness of faint galactic gravity fields and soft star winds, nothing but a tiny speck of ice and dust never again to be seen by human eyes, almost certainly never again to be sensed by any sentient being like us.

But we saw it; and in that almost meaningless moment when it was warmed by the sun, it was simply beautiful. If that matters when you think about comets, then let it matter when you think about yourself.

Editorial: The Age of War

Wednesday evening, January 7, 2007, the President of the United States went before the American people to lay out his plan, what the Administration calls the "New Way Forward," to turn what is becoming a catastrophic U.S. involvement in Iraq into something other than the ominous and evident defeat looming ahead. Five brigades comprising 20,000 additional troops will be inserted into Baghdad, tours of duty for soldiers already there will be extended, and $1.2 billion dollars in new U.S. aid will be used for infrastructure and jobs programs in the war-ravaged country. The President is requesting another $5.6 billion in funds to pay for the troop surge, itself.

The Democrats who control Congress, joined by an increasingly vociferous group of Republicans, are on record opposing this escalation of the American-Iraqi War. According to CNN.com, the extent of formal plans on Capitol Hill to block the President's initiative are thus:

"[S]enators are working on a nonbinding resolution opposing more troops... The House plans to raise a similar resolution."

Such is the materially meaningful scope of countervailing force currently confronting President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative war-makers.

In a January 4, 2007, Special Analysis published here, I wrote the following:

Mr. Bush is going to get his wish: we'll stay; and for now, not only will we stay, but he will escalate this American-Iraqi War.

And the Democrats will not cut off funding for the war...

[W]e'll stay in Iraq... until we're bloodied beyond recognition of our hubris, beyond recognition of our preeminence, beyond recognition of our once unquestioned status as the leader of the free world; and then we shall leave. We shall leave, not when we want to, not when we need to, not when we've had enough, but instead when we are no longer relevant to the history of the future of Iraq and perhaps no longer greatly relevant even to the history of the future of places far from that awful land.

The will to end a bad war is insufficient: war, once born, has a life of its own. Both those who embrace it and those who oppose it stand in the shadow of its thrall. Mr. Bush bids that we walk deeper into its consuming flames, and so we shall. What strength we have to turn away is insufficient compared to the weakness already within our leaders to fight the vortex pulling us deeper into the maw of that which will be our undoing.

Should the Democrats be unable in the months ahead to find the wherewithal to stop this madness, waste not every ounce of energy in rage at their impotence, but instead reserve a modicum for pity of their ignorance: when first they had their chance to draw a sword against the god of war, perhaps they truly believed that a "non-binding resolution" was a weapon.



The Dark Wraith welcomes America to a war without end that cannot be stopped by a leadership without courage.

Special Analysis: Neo-Con End Run

The Sunday Times is reporting that Israel is in the planning stages of a military airstrike on Iran's nuclear production facilities. The newspaper cites multiple, although unnamed, sources for its story, even though Israel is denying that any such operation is being planned. The Times claims the attack will involve warplanes that will first use conventional bombs to blow deep craters above the hardened, underground facilities, followed by low-yield nuclear bombs to carry out the actual destruction of the huge industrial bunkers. CNN.com reports that Israel has not received prior approval by the United States for such a strike on the three targets under consideration.

Despite the absence of explicit approval by the White House, such an attack would work to the advantage of the Bush Administration, facing as it now does a hostile Congress with a Democratic majority already talking publicly about ways to wind down American involvement in Iraq. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday intimated that Congress might even go so far as to deny funding for the President's soon-to-be-announced surge of as many as 20,000 more American troops into Iraq, a warning the Right-wing Weekly Standard claims "...makes the House Democrats the party of defeat, the party of surrender." If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, however, congressional Democrats would face the prospect of de-funding American military operations in Iraq at the same time a spiraling conflict would get underway right next door in Iran.

Few doubt that Iran would retaliate, and one of its most likely first actions would be to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil is shipped from the Persian Gulf to the open seas. Iran has mined the waterway before. Furthermore, as described here and elsewhere, Iran has missile batteries lining its coasts, weapons that would make lumbering oil tankers the oil-bearing equivalents of enormous sitting ducks. While Israel's single-strike plan to end Iran's nuclear ambitions might be successful—a single strike was all it needed to destroy Iraq's Osirak nuclear complex in 1980—the rest of the world would be left to deal with a humiliated, enraged Persian state lashing out in some cases indiscriminately, but in other cases quite pointedly at Israel's putative backer, the United States.

A single Iranian Sunburn missile fired at a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf would drag the United States into war with Iran. Keeping U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Iraq from involvement would be next to impossible, especially if Tehran saw opportunity in goading weakened, under-staffed ground forces in provinces close to the Iraqi border with Iran.

With such a spiraling conflagration exploding in the Middle East, the Democrats in Congress might find little support for using the congressional power of the purse to turn U.S. policy in the Middle East away from military solutions. In fact, if anything, even a limited fight the U.S. might have with Iran would require both large infusions of additional troops into the theatre as well as many billions of dollars in new money to pay for those troops, their weaponry and support materiel.

Far from ending the American-Iraqi War, the Democrats just might find themselves having to go along with massive increases in funding for a regional war of which the Iraqi theatre was only the first and perhaps the least bloody phase.



The Dark Wraith invites readers to contemplate the situation into which Congress—indeed, the United States, itself—might very well be led shortly.

Special Blog Post: Doughnuts and Banking

Eight years ago, in the final days of his work as a consultant, Aaron was desperately hoping for one more payment from a client, one that hadn't paid in months and one with which Aaron's consulting relationship was falling apart anyway. Desperate for money—any money—to stave off eviction and hunger, Aaron prevailed upon a gentleman who had previously been associated with the client corporation, and that decent, upright, Christian fellow finally agreed to wire some. Aaron called his bank every couple of hours for several days thereafter, and he finally got confirmation that funds had been received. That man who had no good reason to take care of a little bit of some client's bill had come through. Aaron's humiliation at having had to beg like some street person was set aside as he quickly wrote checks to pay bills.

As it turned out, the wired funds had, indeed, come through, but they wouldn't be available for several business days. The checks Aaron wrote bounced. Non-sufficient funds charges mounted, returned check fees piled up, and Aaron faced the possibility of criminal charges. What had been enough to get him right with just about everyone turned into a deficit of about six hundred bucks.

That was the end of all relationships Aaron would have with financial institutions.

It wouldn't be long before he would return, as he had too many times, to the streets. Old cars that were dangerous to drive when they could actually move, occasional use of the hidden key at a friend's apartment to grab some food and a shower, even less frequent groveling for a couple of bucks from brothers when they'd gotten over being mad about the last time he'd bummed five dollars. Mostly, Aaron kept going by using good-hearted people who didn't have the common sense or the willpower to tell him to go away forever. It was the whole nine yards of crash and burn: an irresponsible life of being a leech on society and on the people who thought they were helping.

Before the time of the Keynesian economists, those of the old Austrian school held sway, what we now call the "Classical" economists. One of their many tenets was that all unemployment (and underemployment) is voluntary. Aside from exceedingly rare, wholly incapacitated individuals, all people can find work. It might not be what they like, it might not be what they want, it might not pay what they think they're worth, it might disrupt their lives, their families, and their greater hopes; but some kind of work is always, always available. No one can plead destitution with a straight face of no personal responsibility whatsoever for his or her wretched lot. Aaron knew his economics, and he knew very well, despite his progressivist leanings, that the Classical economists were dead-on right about people like him.

Things got better for Aaron once he was given the keys to the run-down, inner-city, small, two-year school where he'd been teaching. The $7.50 per classroom hour was nothing compared to those keys, which meant that a couch in the Winter and a hot shower in the basement every morning was available. Lots and lots of challenging work was there, too, teaching across the curriculum, running the education side of the school, having to deal with every manner of educational, social, and mental health deficiency imaginable in a student body—what more could a person ask for?

The Classical economists were right, at least when it came to one White man whose life of sublimated excuses for being a loser finally yielded to patience, persistence, and a willingness to do what others wouldn't for a little paycheck.

Eventually, because of fool-hardy response to a personal, family matter, Aaron would leave that school and city; and from there, he would eventually return to near-destitution. Being coldly objective about it all, he probably wanted it that way: even though he was leaving a more-or-less physical home, he was returning to a much older home of his, the one he had first gotten used to in his adolescence and to which he had returned, over and over again, in his adult life.

A man can't fall to his death from a valley. The high places are for people too foolish to know what could happen up there.

Getting teaching work wherever he could, Aaron was making a meager go of it, though, where he had landed. The teaching gigs—finally supplemented as they were with a little janitorial-type work—were promising to put enough money in his pockets to stave off even the scent of desperation.

But then, last week, Aaron made a stupid mistake.

Many employers these days simply will not pay by physical checks. Aaron had been using a friend's account in another state as the depository institution for his payroll checks, but he'd been getting worried about this, not because of the friend's integrity, but because those checks were crossing interstate lines, and the cumulative effect of those regular transfers had the potential to cause his friend trouble with an increasingly aware, aggressive, and paranoid federal government. It was a miracle the IRS hadn't already made a move, and the prospect of those transfers triggering Homeland Security's thugs was beginning to worry him terribly.

Aaron decided it was time to make his peace with financial institutions by getting himself a checking account into which his paychecks could be direct-deposited. His long-held fears about the banking system convinced him that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go near a regular bank, much less wander into one and beg for the favor of an account, but one credit union looked promising. His status as a teacher meant he would qualify without a hitch, or so he thought as he wallowed in his fantasy of becoming a big-people-type-person once again, after all these years. He put some gas in his car, drove to main location, tied his hair back, and headed in the doors.

The credit union building was really nice on the inside. It even smelled like an old-fashioned bank. The floor was carpeted, and right there in the lobby were several big, open boxes of doughnuts. Aaron thought to himself, "Those are for people who can't live without stuff that isn't good for them."

To the left in the lobby were the teller windows. The ladies behind the counter looked friendly. They even greeted by name several customers walking in. Straight ahead were the desks where visitors could get information, apply for loans, and open savings and checking accounts. (Actually, credit unions cannot offer real "checking accounts" in the sense that banks can; instead they offer "negotiable order of withdrawal" accounts on which check-like instruments called "drafts" or maybe ever "cheques" can be written, but that's a nearly moot point these days, so the accounts are called "checking" here.)

Aaron had already downloaded and filled out the checking account application form from the Website of the credit union, and he'd filled it out. This would probably help the people at the credit union know how great he would be to have as a customer.

A young lady sat down with Aaron, and the two of them talked briefly before she began to key the information from his form into her computer. She asked him for his driver's license so she could make a photocopy of it pursuant to provisions of the Patriot Act, and she asked him for something he'd received by mail to establish that he lived where he was representing he did. Aaron was ready with everything needed. The lady made the photocopies, pushed a few more keys on her computer, and shuffled some papers around; then she said, "I'll be right back."

"Ah, cool," Aaron thought. "This is where she goes back, gets the forms for me to sign, gets my temporary debit card, and all that."

Aaron sat there reading the brochures, looking around, thinking about which doughnut he should go for. He had glanced at a clock as the lady was getting up to go in the back. When he checked it again, a little too much time had gone by. It was only five minutes, but that was too long.

Mildly happy thoughts he had been tossing in his mind simply vanished, replaced with a spiraling chain of fear-driven observations and wild conclusions.

"God, what was I thinking, coming in here?... Security. That guy who casually stepped out of an office down that corridor. He's plain-clothes. Concealed carry. No, he won't shoot; doesn't have it in him, not without going all tunnel vision. He'd clutch... Lobby exit. Five seconds—tops—to my car. Broken driver-side door. Been that way for two years. Just jump in through the passenger side like always, get the keys in the ignition while I'm climbing across. Straight forward through the grass back out to the road... Look at those customers going up there begging for their money. Do they have any idea of how precarious this banking system is? Do any of them know what's going to... What in the God's name is she doing back there? Calling someone? Cops?... Did she give me back my stuff? Oh, thank God, she did. That was stupid of her. She wasn't very friendly... Doughnuts. I'll get that long one with the white icing on the way out... I need to leave right now. Here I am, sitting here like I think there's some chance this is all going to work out great. What in the Hell was I thinking coming in here?! Now I've gone and made a total mess for myself... I want to see my cat."

The lady returned with her paperwork. She sat down and started the routine: "Okay, we'll have you sign a couple of documents, and I'll get you some checks you can use here to withdraw money."

Aaron's head cleared instantly, "Oh. Well, when do I get a debit card?"

The lady didn't even bat an eye. "We're going to have you on what we call a 'restricted account' for six months. You'll have those checks you can use to withdraw no more than a hundred dollars at a time, as long as you maintain a balance of no less than three hundred dollars. Those checks won't be good anyplace else, of course."

Aaron was getting more focused. "Those are the 'cashing checks' listed in that brochure, the ones you charge twenty dollars each to cash, aren't they?"

She nodded: "Yes. As I said, we'll review your account in six months to see if we can take some of the restrictions off it at that time."

Aaron persisted: "So, I get no debit card, I get no checks to pay bills with, I get access to my own money only in one hundred dollar increments at twenty dollars per withdrawal, this credit union gets free use of my funds—no less than three hundred dollars of it at any given time—and I get no more than a promise of a 'review' a half-a-year from now."

"That's the best we can offer someone with no credit records for so long," she answered.

Not being given to lecturing people who can do nothing but carry out their duties according to the rules if they want to keep their own jobs, Aaron resisted his driving desire to explain to the hapless woman that even most religions no longer exact painful penitence from outsiders who want to join.

Aaron's short indulgence in hysteria had completely lost its irrational edge. Yes, once that lady saw his unexpectedly blank seven-year credit record, she followed procedure by going to the back where her supervisors were. She told the security guy to keep an eye on the situation, so even though he was able to see everything in the lobby from his security monitors, he casually came out to get a quick visual ID.

And yes, those people waiting to transact their business at the teller windows really are all suckers, standing like so many condemned in a slowly closing noose of a banking system that will progressively flow further and further against their interests and well-being in the months and years ahead.

And yes, willingly—maybe even a little excitedly—Aaron trying to join the milling masses of customers of the modern banking system was stupid, stupid, stupid. Everything about him that woman had keyed into that computer was now irretrievably passed into the ocean of information being collected, aggregated, and mined by all manner of governments, corporations, and other creepy organizations and unaccountable individuals.

Aaron knew better than to make any more fuss. "I do apologize for this inconvenience, but I can't accept these terms," he said, looking slightly down. Although he has aged—a few lines in his face and some grey in his hair have robbed him of most of the charm he once used to no small effect in turning people's hearts—his smile, the smile of a defeated child just wanting to go home, was still enough to prevail upon her to tear up the paper copy of the credit report she was holding.

"I really am grateful to you for taking the time to work with me," he said as he glanced up at her.

"Oh, that's alright..." she replied, cutting herself off before she reciprocated with the apology of her own she wanted to give.

Aaron got up and departed. He didn't take any doughnuts on his way out. Those are for people who can't live without stuff that isn't good for them.



The Dark Wraith hopes readers have enjoyed this story.

Special Analysis: On "Troop Redeployment"

As the Democrats assume the mantle of congressional power, some within the progressive community here in the United States are calling for a rapid and complete exit of U.S. troops from Iraq. Described in euphemistic terms as "troop redeployment," this proposal has been advanced by some Democratic members of Congress, most notably those in the Out of Iraq Caucus, some of whom have called for an aggressive, 60-day timetable for complete withdrawal of all American forces.

Although a swift and total departure would, in many ways, be desirable, both Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword and I have commented on the historically well-documented potential of full-scale withdrawals for wholesale slaughter of the retreating troops. The idea that technology, force size, or any combination of those and other factors can materially affect what is evidently a persistent military phenomenon is dangerous when operationalized as the extent and substance of an overall exit strategy.

It was the neo-conservatives who believed that they could get away with and be successful in defying the body of war knowledge and the grave advice of the prosecutors of war, and they have been proven disastrously wrong. That is a cautionary tale for any military planner of any stripe in considering the odds of having military history not rear its obstinate head in a modern armed conflict.

As random, capricious, and senseless as war seems, it is a process subject to laws, principles, axioms, and theorems that are, in any given nation in any given era, at best only partially understood. To dispense with the precious shards of genuine near-certitude we possess is to walk a road to ruin—or, more to the point, to run a highway of redeployment to wreckage.

Full-scale retreat—and that's what we're talking about here—is very likely to result in a swift, appalling loss of life, both to American soldiers running the killing box corridors out of Iraq and to large numbers of non-combatants in the path of their flight.

Troops can withdraw in an orderly manner; but when they begin to panic under hit-and-run raid after bloody, hit-and-run raid upon their flanks and rear—especially with so many new American boots being pushed into the Iraqi sands by Mr. Bush's new "surge and accelerate" plan—panic will blow in, and that will set the stage for the bloodbath of a rout. Order and discipline evaporate into the overwhelming heat of desperation for survival, and the shattering columns become so many individuals waiting their turns to die, even as they furiously, then blindly, spray the land and sky with what remains of their ordnance.

No, we will not bug out of Iraq. The same generals who are now being set aside by Mr. Bush because they diplomatically tried to disabuse him of his "New Way Forward" initiative would have been the commanders steadfastly rejecting a wholesale pull-out of American troops, and such stance would have had nothing to do with the consequential fate of the people of Iraq, but rather with the American soldiers, whose security and safety take precedence over local concerns in matters of troop movements.

Mr. Bush is going to get his wish: we'll stay; and for now, not only will we stay, but he will escalate this American-Iraqi War.

And the Democrats will not cut off funding for the war. They're not quite so naïve, knowing as they do that, if they were to deny funds for military operations in Iraq, the very first people to suffer would be the GIs on the ground there. Right now, the Commander-in-Chief has lost the support of the soldiers, and that is extraordinary. But if that same Commander-in-Chief, a man given to straw man arguments anyway, is handed a rallying cry that his hands have been tied by the Democrats, those same troops who now disrespect him will turn ugly really fast, and their wrath will not be directed at their leader, but instead at the politicians who were obviously responsible for taking away their bullets and chow.

But far, far worse than that prospect is this: take away materiel and even food from a massive, in-field force of soldiers, and that force could easily, in the virtual blink of a news cycle, turn into the single most frightening beast that nature can muster from the howling depths of humanity at its worst. Strangle the Pentagon, and the Pentagon will pass the garrote right down to the GIs cooking in their miserable tents. Make those troops suffer like that and watch them turn into one giant pack of starving wolves. You want atrocities? You haven't seen atrocities like those committed by trained, desperate men with rifles and knives.

No, we'll stay in Iraq. We'll stay until we're bloodied beyond recognition of our hubris, beyond recognition of our preeminence, beyond recognition of our once unquestioned status as the leader of the free world; and then we shall leave. We shall leave, not when we want to, not when we need to, not when we've had enough, but instead when we are no longer relevant to the history of the future of Iraq and perhaps no longer greatly relevant even to the history of the future of places far from that awful land.

We may then come home to do our soul searching, our national finger-pointing, and our collective denial of that which we did and that which we would have done again were this not to have been our death knell as Empire.


The Dark Wraith has spoken.

"Surge and Accelerate": A Note on the Republican-Democrat Support Axis

As President Bush prepares to address the nation to announce his intention to send 20,000 more American troops to Iraq in his "surge and accelerate" plan to turn the tide on the deteriorating situation there, criticism of what appears to many a counter-productive escalation of an increasingly unpopular war is mounting. Among the most vociferous of Mr. Bush's critics in the mainstream media is MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, who minced no words in his January 2, 2007, commentary condemning the troop surge plan. (The YouTube version of the video has been posted by litbrit of The Last Duchess on her site and cross-posted by her at Shakespeare's Sister.)

During his latest firey excoriation of Mr. Bush, Mr. Olberman took several opportunities to strongly criticize John McCain, who has publicly stated his support for the troop surge. A brief cut-away during Olberman's message showed footage of Sen. McCain standing at a podium with five other people. That film was shot in Baghdad several weeks ago during a congressional fact-finding mission. The still-frame below shows some of the participating members of Congress at a news conference held during the trip. Sen. McCain is at the podium making clear his support for sending more U.S. soldiers to the war-wracked nation.


The woman on the far left in the frame is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who aligned herself with a number of other Republicans in declaring her opposition to sending more troops to Iraq, although Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), seen in the frame immediately to the right of McCain, expressed both his shock at how much the security situation in Baghdad had deteriorated and his full backing for sending more soldiers there.

The man standing between Collins and McCain is Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who was quoted in a Washington Post article as saying, "We need more, not less, U.S. troops here [in Iraq]." In favoring the troop surge, Sen. Lieberman has distinguished himself as one of the few remaining ostensibly "liberal" or even "moderate" politicians in Washington publicly supporting what Mr. Olberman of MSNBC describes as a war initiated by a "...President [who] does not have any idea what he's doing - and [for whom] other Americans will have to die."

Given Sen. Lieberman's abandonment of the Democratic Party and his long-standing and very visible support for President Bush on matters of national security, the Connecticut Senator's alliance with McCain on escalating the American-Iraqi War may fuel speculation of a McCain-Lieberman "national unity" Presidential ticket in 2008, which would afford the American people a clear opportunity to elect yet another President and Vice President for whom other Americans would have to die.


The Dark Wraith will leave to readers such conclusions as may be warranted about Sen. Lieberman's continuing ties to an increasingly marginalized wing of the GOP.